Moving, shaking, and busting out of my pants…..did I mention it’s a GIRL?

As the pregnancy progresses, my brain power regresses and, I have to admit I’ve slacked on the blog a little (which is sad since I’ve just started it). The result? A power packed post, full of everything worth mentioning over the last 3 weeks. So sue me, I’m long winded.

Anyway, it’s official, maternity pants are the shit. I no longer even try to go for the jeans without the elastic waist band because let’s face it; they weren’t that comfortable when I was still a perfect size 27. And if I knew you could find stylish, sexy butt jeans that had swapped their buttons and zippers for soft stretchy lycra, I’d of made the switch sooner. In fact, I don’t even promise to go back to normal pants after the baby. Frankly, undoing buttons is a time waster, and I suspect post baby, I won’t have the luxury of wasting any moments. I’ve become obsessed with buying maternity jeans and 4 pairs in, I still feel like I could use more. I should give it up, really, but I was a shopper and a fashionista-wanna-be long before I was knocked up, and some habits are hard to break.

Regardless, the joys of expanding waist bands are becoming increasingly apparent, and with the pending holiday season, I can’t see them getting any less joyous.

I have to admit, 21 weeks and 2 days (because us pregnant ladies count everything by the DAY) into this pregnancy, and I haven’t seen too much change in my body. I know somewhere, there is a pregnancy god, preparing to strike me down for playing with fire, but I swear I’m not being cocky. I just honestly didn’t know what to expect, and anticipated blowing up like a balloon before the pee dried on my stick. I mean, isn’t that the thing, you get pregnant and you get fat? Not that I want to get fat, I just want to be prepared for when it starts to happen. So far, I’ve got a little protruding belly, which is bigger in the night than in the day, and wonderfully C-sized breasts. I have to giggle at the belly changes from morning to night, it’s crazy. Surprisingly, you have to feed the baby too.

Now onto the baby, as you can see from the headline, it’s a girl! Shocked the hell out of me when the midwife told me that. I was SO sure this bean was a boy; I’d already picked out a name. And of course, living in BC where sick and twisted people do horrible things, there are rules here about finding out the sex before 20-24 weeks. So even though I laid pants down on the table, and had the technician write in the report what Baby Barker was, I wasn’t able to find out until I called my midwife. She was not going to tell me, even though I was a short 34 hours away from being at the chosen 20 weeks.

I thought I saw the telltale 3 lines, but my husband did not, so we left no closer to knowing. And the thing is, I know there are a lot of people out there who don’t find out until delivery, and I know that back in the day this wasn’t even an option. But it is an option now and damnit I wanted to KNOW. And the fact that some stranger KNEW and wouldn’t tell me was irking me. It was written down for all medical professionals to review, but not the mama.

My friend O would tell me to be patient, tell me that the baby would be the same sex Tuesday as it was on Thursday, and that I should just wait to find out in a few days. I don’t know if she has forgotten the last 7 years of our friendship or is holding out hopeful that motherhood will change me, but I am far from being a patient person.

So I called the next day. I called under the guise that I was looking for my triple screen results, when in fact I knew they were all fine since they were taking so long to come back. I was just hoping to not bug the Clinic Coordinator with my call so fast, so I figured this was a good way to get around that. To my surprise, the midwife had the results. I was surprised because the technician at the hospital said they wouldn’t have the results until Thursday, and it was only Tuesday. However the midwife had told me they would know on the Tuesday, so I held out hope that she was right. I suspect telling me to wait until Thursday was both the technician’s punishment for my shaken baby remark (more on that later), and because she knew that on Tuesday, I would only be 19 weeks and 6 days, and not 20 weeks. And no way should I know 1 day in advance, in case I made a rash decision to abort the fetus and try again for something better. You know, cause this whole getting pregnant and holding your breath for 12 weeks, praying every time you pee that your wipe will be clean, is fun and easy stuff.

Anyway, I called, and Penny the Clinic Coordinator said “oh I just got your results, hold on” and came back to tell me. She said “it’s a little Girl” and I heard boy and thought for a split second, d’uh. Then I had to ask her, what was that? And she said “It’s a GIRL” and I said “aww thank-you” and hung up. I then tortured my mom and sister a little by telling them I knew, but my husband didn’t yet, so I couldn’t tell them. I finally got a hold of him and he was ecstatic. He’s wanted a girl this whole time.

He was ecstatic and a rush of guilt covered over me like a cheap itchy blanket. Not guilt because I was disappointed or something, just guilt that I was so sure it was a boy, and it wasn’t. I don’t even know how to explain this feeling. My friend Jill put it best, she said that when they found out they were having a girl, after expecting a boy, they were so excited about the girl, but a little sad not to be having a boy. It’s weird. Very weird. I’m not at all unhappy about having a girl; I think it will be awesome. It’s supposed to be every mothers dream right? So how dare I falter if even for a moment? I had just imagined a little boy in my mind so many times; I’d even caught myself calling my belly “my little man”. So not now only was I surprised by the gender of my little one, I had also already given her a complex. HER I’d given HER a complex.

It took a few days to really wrap my head around the girl thing. I’m excited, I am. But I was also sure I was going to save the human race with my lone male offspring, since everyone I know (save two high school friends) has had baby girls. And so, here I am, with my little girl belly and my itchy guilt blanket, hoping this is not the first of many mothering disappointments to come. That is, me being a disappointing mother.

Back to my shaken baby comment. This is a good story. I was laying on the table, pants around my knees, belly lubed up like a Christmas turkey basting in butter, and the technician was having a hard time getting Baby Girls brain shot. She assured me nothing was wrong, but that the doctor would want to see the brain from a very specific angle and she couldn’t get it. I was asked to pee (OH THANK YOU BABY FOR GIVING ME THE CHANCE TO PEE TWICE DURING AN ULTRASOUND!!!!!!) and to shake my butt and skip my way there and back. I was then asked to continue jumping around like an idiot in the room, until the tech came back, to see if I couldn’t force baby to try a new position. So there I stood, hopping around, listening to my husband self diagnose the baby because the photo he saw of her brain was not the same as the one on the wall, and waiting on the technician. When she came back she said “shake that baby into position yet?” and I said “I guess this is the only time it will be ok for me to shake my baby, hey?” and I smiled. Apparently, this kind of joke is never appropriate, regardless of the preceding circumstances. Who knew? Mothering fail #1 (the gender thing is Mother fail #2, as it occurred AFTER this incident).

Oh well. She finished the exam, wrote down the gender and sent us on our way. We still haven’t yet seen the midwife but, I’m assuming since we’ve also had no emergency “your baby is actually a Boston Terrier” (because believe me, I’ve had that dream and birthing Tuker is no joy) phone calls, everything is going along well in there. Which is good, because being pregnant is like sitting on the edge of your seat for 10 (nope not 9) months, optimistic but prepared.

So for now, we continue to count the days, the weeks, the months until her arrival, and try not to kill each other creating the perfect, yet highly underutilized nursery in our computer room. And I should mention Baby Girl has been having a party in my womb for about 3 straight weeks now. And while I appreciate her ability to shake her booty like her mama, adhering to her father’s sleep pattern of staying up till 3am and sleeping past noon is going to have to stop.

But that is probably better saved for a post-birth post :)